


Nothing Is As It Has Been

by yet_intrepid



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Bittersweet, Canon Compliant, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Post-Star Wars: A New Hope, Sad Leia, Sad Luke, Sibling Bonding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-27
Updated: 2017-06-27
Packaged: 2018-11-19 14:37:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11315463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yet_intrepid/pseuds/yet_intrepid
Summary: “Why me?” grumbles Luke. “Anybody on this base would be happy to keep the princess company.”“I wanted you,” Leia grumbles back. “Why are you sitting on the floor, anyway?”





	Nothing Is As It Has Been

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Rivers and Roads" by the Head and the Heart.

Luke’s fighting the feeling. He swears, he is. He doesn’t like it, and he knows it’s probably not true, and even if it is true, well, moping about it won’t change anything.

Still, it’s what he feels: the people in the Rebellion aren’t very friendly.

Maybe it’s just Luke; maybe it’s that he hasn’t been around so many new people basically ever before. And certainly he hasn’t been around so many new people after saving all their lives; he hasn’t saved very many lives before. (He hadn’t ended any, either, not until now.) But everyone seems to avoid him, turning away when he smiles in greeting, answering him with tight upturns of the lip that don’t look very happy at all.

And Leia is busy with all sorts of princess stuff, and Han is working on the Falcon, which means he’s snappy about interruptions. Chewbacca’s probably helping him, too. Which means Luke is alone, and he doesn’t like that. He already feels enough like he doesn’t belong, so far from Tatooine, where everybody he’s met knows things he doesn’t. The entire political history of the last twenty years, for example, or how to encrypt comm signals, or how to make edible food out of the weird plants that grow on Yavin IV.

Luke slumps down on the floor in the hallway, scrunching his knees up so as not to get in the way of the people passing. He should be fine, he thinks; he should be happy. He did something really important, the kind of thing he always dreamed of when he was a kid. He’s got a lightsaber at his belt and a medal lying on his bed in the room he shared with five other pilots last night.

He doesn’t have much else.

No family anymore, no home. Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru are dead; Ben is dead; Biggs is dead. He’s got no money, either, so he couldn’t leave Yavin IV if he wanted to. And even if he could, where would he go? He doesn’t have skills, at least not beyond maintaining vaporators and piloting one-man fighters and shooting decently straight. It’s not like he could land on some trade planet and build himself a life.

And the thing is, he doesn’t _want_ to leave the Rebellion. There’s a sense of purpose here he’s never felt before, a feeling like maybe—just maybe—he can change some things in this blasted-up world. He doesn’t want to lose that.

He just wants the other people in the Rebellion to talk to him a little more.

Just admit it, Skywalker, he thinks to himself, as he watches a group of ground soldiers pass him without a glance in his direction. They’re laughing together, and it makes his throat ache. Just admit it—you’re bitter. You’re bitter that these strangers survived, and the people you care about didn’t.

But no, not that. He’s glad they survived, or at least some part of him is. But he _is_ bitter that he couldn’t save the others, that he could blow up a planet-killer but he couldn’t get home in time to rescue his own family.

Luke scrubs both hands through his hair. It’s longer than ever; before leaving Tatooine, he’d been arguing with Aunt Beru over whether it needed a trim. He never thought he’d miss that, or that he’d long for the sucked-dry desert air, or that he’d finally get off-world just to ache for home before a standard week was out.

“There you are!”

Luke looks up. Leia is sweeping gracefully towards him, despite the fact that she isn’t wearing a gown today. Luke’s never seen anyone move gracefully in oversized cargo pants before.

“I’ve been looking for you everywhere,” Leia says. “Where’ve you been?”

Luke shrugs. “Around.”

“Oh, is that where.” Leia smiles dryly as she sits down beside him and jabs at his ribs with a friendly elbow. “Guess I didn’t check _around_.”

Luke pulls away from her, crossing his arms around himself. “I thought you were going over campaign maps or something.”

“Well, I’m done now.” Leia squints at him. “And I wanted some company.”

“Why me?” grumbles Luke. “Anybody on this base would be happy to keep the princess company.”

“I wanted you,” Leia grumbles back. “Why are you sitting on the floor, anyway?”

“I wanted to,” Luke says. “It matches my low mood.”

Leia shoves at him again. “Feeling down? The hero of the Rebel Alliance? Come on.”

Luke sighs. “Hero, right.”

Leia raises her eyebrows, then stands up and extends a hand to him. “Come on, let’s go somewhere else,” she says, and after a moment of reluctance, Luke grips her hand to pull himself up.

They’re silent as Luke follows Leia through the halls of the base, but they walk close together, shoulders bumping when Leia makes sudden turns to avoid people who might ask her questions. The thick air, humid even inside, presses around them as they slip into the turbolift. Leia hits the button for the top floor.

“There’s a lookout,” she explains, leaning back against the wall, “up on the roof. You can catch the breeze there, look out over the jungle. You down to climb through some ventilation shafts?”

“Sure,” says Luke.

The turbolift dings and Leia steers Luke towards a ladder into the shafts. After they crawl a little ways, Leia opens a hatch. They emerge onto a platform about four feet wide, shaded by the pyramid at their backs.

Luke stands on the edge and heaves in the cool wind that swirls around them. He’s used to the heat; that’s nothing new to a kid from Tatooine. But the air on Yavin IV is so dense with moisture that sometimes he feels like he can’t move, and the breeze is a karking relief.

Leia sits down on the ledge and zips off the legs of her cargo pants, turning them into shorts. “So,” she says. “The hero thing.”

“Yeah,” says Luke. He closes his eyes. “It’s…not fun. Not like I thought it would be when I was a kid.”

“Yeah,” says Leia. She sighs. “I know.”

He turns to look at her, putting things together for the first time. “Leia,” he says, carefully, “Alderaan—that’s your homeworld, isn’t it.”

She laughs bitterly. “Well,” she says, “it _was_.”

Luke bites his lip as he sits down beside her. He’s lost a lot, but at least his planet is still circling. That’s a whole new level of not being able to go home.

“I don’t want to say I understand,” he says quietly, “because I don’t. But I’m sorry.”

“I wish I could’ve blown that space station myself,” Leia mutters to her thin knees.

It’s Luke’s turn for a bitter laugh. “Yeah, well,” he says, “you’d be welcome to it. Maybe then everyone would stop avoiding me like I’m some kind of…I don’t know, it’s like they think I don’t want to be friends but I do, I can’t go home either and Biggs is dead and my aunt and uncle are dead and Ben’s dead too and just, _kriff_. I’d leave if they wanted me to but I don’t have anywhere to go.”

Leia peers up at him. “Do you want to leave?”

“No,” says Luke. “I just—I just want things to be okay, you know? I want to have friends. I want to not wake up at night and think about how I blasted thousands of people into space dust and how I’m not sorry I did because they would’ve blasted even more people into space dust but I never killed anyone before, Leia, and I wish…”

He trails off. Behind them, the sun is setting; the ships on the cleared ground gleam orange and silver in the light. And beyond that, trees, trees for miles, and Luke always wanted to see trees but now he hates them. He’d trade every tree in the universe to have his aunt and uncle back.

“You wish none of this ever had to happen,” Leia says.

He nods. The view is suddenly blurry with tears.

“Me too,” says Leia. She slips an arm around him. “Me kriffing too.”


End file.
